3 Key Pain Points of selling on Amazon Marketplace

Thousands of sellers are joining Amazon Marketplace every month but many of these are leaving the marketplace too. There is a growing bias of the marketplace towards customers and coupled with customer frauds is driving small sellers away from online selling on Amazon and other marketplaces.

Some of the common seller pain points are Ambiguous policies, penalties by the marketplace. Here we highlight 3 key pain points that we believe every seller faces on Amazon.

1. Customer Ratings:

Amazon allows buyers to rate the delivery experience from sellers and any bad feedback is reflected as an Order Defect Rate (ODR). Having an ODR of more than 1% can lead to seller account suspension. Though it is a good tool for benchmark products & services offered by sellers, we have seen many a time buyers rate sellers badly without any proper reason for that. Unfortunately, unlike most modern internet services where both buyers and sellers rate each other, Amazon does not allow sellers to rate the buyer. It is assumed that all buyers are good, which is not true for Amazon India.

2. Customer Return Frauds

There are too many returns done by customers. Though there are Amazon policies to cover for return-related losses, it’s not practical to get compensated for every case, particularly cases where the return is received back with only packaging damage. Add to this, there is a big problem where many buyers send old used products as a return product back to the seller. Amazon, unfortunately, has no policy that checks this unscrupulous habit of some buyers.

3. Customer-Centric Policies

Amazon marketplace is designed on the major assumption that makes buying experience very smooth. One-Click Return, no questions asked return, no check of return by pickup executive, and instant refunds are amazing features for buyers but have huge implications for sellers. The assumption that all buyers are good and do not misuse the system is a big burden on sellers and leads to many leakages for seller revenues which ultimately leads to losses.

For a healthy eCommerce marketplace eco-system, we believe Amazon should have introduced some balance in its approach between sellers and buyers. That balance can be set up through policies that don’t allow buyers to misuse the system. Introducing buyer ratings, allow limited returns per month, an inspection of return products by pickup executive, etc can go a long way in getting that balance.